Looking Back on the Olympics

Now that the Olympics are over, the pejorative gaze on China has reemerged in our media regarding the tainted milk.

Which leads me back to musing on those young white protesters at the Olympic games. What were they protesting? That same litany: China has no respect for human rights. And these young white people, as always, the Great White Hopes, were there to draw attention to that fact.

Exactly which population were they protesting for, however? Not the downtrodden Chinese people. No, because they are a monolith, part of the dominant “Oppressor” population. No. Instead, they were protesting for the minorities who are supposedly “othered” such as the favorite darling of Western cultural colonialists, the Tibetans. And why are they protesting on behalf of the Tibetans? Because the big, bad Chinese “people” (not the government, just all Chinese people are demonized by Americans) do not respect the sovereignty of Tibetans.

It always amuses me how Americans enjoy pointing fingers at other cultures about problems they themselves engage in. In other words, Euro-Americans like to project. Rather like Republican politicians. And they do it so well. I never see these same young white people protesting how so many Black people were oppressed and continue to be oppressed by our government’s Katrina policies. I don’t see those same people protesting the continuous oppression different American-Indian tribes suffer through government policies regarding land. I met one man born in the early 70’s who was removed from his parents care as an infant, forcibly made to attend a Catholic school, and then whose parents were forcibly removed from their land in Texas because the Federal government found oil on their land.

Gee, where are the protesters when they are needed? Too busy externalizing their collective imperialistic guilt to look in their own backyards, apparently.